Posts by SurStudio

I think adding a couple of steps to force buyers to enter their addresses during checkout is not a good idea. I believe you should redirect them to do that when they open any marketplace page, so it won’t interfere with the checkout process.

I think the middle man option is not bad. Here you see lots of good people trying to help you giving you ideas. Perhaps you should contact a few of these people (you might want to choose older members, I don’t know), send them like 500 USD or something to their PayPal/Payooner/Whatever and ask them to send that money back to you using Western Union/Money Gram. Just a thought.

Great post. Can you ask what would happen if a foreign company doesn’t pay EU VAT? Like is there any punishment of some sort? Thanks!

Edit: Also, shouldn’t it be considered the place of enjoyment instead of the location of the buyer. For ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, the Items are going to be hosted somewhere. Shouldn’t be the location of the server where the Item is hosted taken into consideration for VAT purposes? And not the buyers location?

Seems like it should be considered the place of ‘use and enjoyment’. In the specific case of ThemeForest and CodeCanyon, should be where’s the server hosting the Items, and not what’s the buyers location.

Cubell said
@Surstudio, I really hope this doesn’t across as rude, but I don’t see the relevance in any of that to this conversation. If some buyers go to such extreme extents to break the law to avoid paying a tax they should be paying (i.e. VAT on goods they buy), what do you want Envato to do? Envato will be complying with VAT law from 1st January by collecting VAT from people they know are EU buyers and then passing it on to the relevant authorities following VAT compliance guidelines.
And now that we have the future of VAT compliance on Envato established, we have shifted the attention to get Envato to clarify in crystal-clear terms, who the real seller is and to discuss past sales, as that has a huge impact on past declarations of income tax and VAT. If you read the hundreds of comments in this thread, you can read on why this is so important/relevant and is what most authors are waiting Envato to talk about next.

No worries, we’re just talking here. It’s true that some people get a bit touchy sometimes.

That was a part of another bigger message, look up on the previous page. Anyway, I don’t expect Envato to do anything. The comment was meant to reveal the flaws of a law made by people with little to none knowledge about the Internet.

To me, the terms are crystal-clear already. As you said, here the discussion seems to be who’s the real seller etc… I don’t think that really matters, is a topic that leads to disagreements and rage.

Envato is going to collect VAT on EU buyers, and authors will still receive their payments as always. Neither Envato or authors will pay VAT on previous years. EU authorities can’t force EU authors to pay these taxes because those authors simply don’t have the required information. Envato won’t be paying those taxes either as they will go bankrupt.

If I were a EU author, I’ll setup an offshore company for 1000 USD/year, take my money out of the EU, and live with less stress.

GravityDept said
@ senorthemes — That doesn’t matter anymore. The new EU law taking effect on January 1, 2015 changes the tax zone to the place of supply not the seller’s location.

True, but I wonder how long will it take for EU buyers to realize they can use a VPN software/service to fake their location to not pay tax. It’s really simple actually.

That won’t work under the EU law. Sellers are required to validate and store two pieces of information to determine where a buyer lives. Under the (stupid non-realistic) law you cannot simply take the user’s word and IP address as truth.

If a buyer uses a VPN in lets say, Singapore, and provides an address from Singapore, and has a PayPal account in Singapore, that’s pretty much it. Besides, Envato won’t ask their buyers for their addresses before they make a purchase, they will use the address from the payment gateway; or who knows, maybe they will just use the IP address of the buyer to get its location.

EU buyers will do this, because it’ll affect all their online electronic/software transactions. It’s not to save 10 USD on a theme. It’s to save hundreds or thousands in the long run.

The law and all its requirements are one thing, real scenario is totally different.

GravityDept said
@ senorthemes — That doesn’t matter anymore. The new EU law taking effect on January 1, 2015 changes the tax zone to the place of supply not the seller’s location.

True, but I wonder how long will it take for EU buyers to realize they can use a VPN software/service to fake their location to not pay tax. It’s really simple actually.

Also, many authors are expecting Envato to pay those past years of taxes. That won’t happen, if authors earning 50%-70% can’t afford to pay, lets say 20% (average EU tax) of previous years earnings; how come Envato earning 30%-50% could? Plus, Envato has to pay the fees for the transactions, and to cover all the operational costs etc…

Seems like there’s a lot of information on the internet about this new tax scheme. However, it doesn’t say what the EU would do if foreign companies don’t comply. I mean, what could they do anyway?! You can’t just legislate for foreign territories.